As a tenant of Chertsey Road, I attended the virtual meeting of the allotment forum on Wednesday evening. It lasted over two hours and was, as you would expect, a talking shop, where the representatives from all the various allotments in the Borough wanted to gets their points across. Our Chairman and Allotment coordinator represented CHAS and their recollections are in this week’s newsletter.
I looked at it from a different point of view and my ‘take away’ points, which were declined for inclusion in the newsletter, are as follows.
On Tuesday 24th February there was a virtual meeting of the Hounslow Allotment Forum at which there were representatives of about 12 different allotment sites and allotment societies across the borough.
It was agreed that the representatives would share best practices that allotments currently use. We would also discuss shared issues such as managing waiting lists, help shape the future of allotments, fly tipping on sites and should there be a probation period for new tenants. Do we need compostable toilets at £9k each some do, a lot do not. Who will organise and help run the proposed micro plots, where up to 10 tenants will share a 10-rod plot? Do plots need to be remeasured and charges be for a sq. yd rather than per rod, as some plots are slightly larger or smaller than the standard size.
The discussion then turned onto the review of the proposed charges. In Chiswick we have the largest proportion of out of borough tenants and would be worst hit. Some thought the proposed charges reasonable, and others were outraged. It was agreed that we would meet again after the results of the consultation on the charges were closed on the 19th March.
REMEMBER TO HAVE YOUR SAY ON allotmentcharges@hounslow.gov.uk
The more objections to them the more chance there are that they will not be introduced in their proposed format.
The Councils Allotment Officer announced that there would not be any plot inspections until after lockdown had ended nor would there be any plots relet. He said that just because some plots were uncultivated did not mean they were not tenanted. The tenants may be shielding or have other reasons for not being able to cultivate their plots at the moment.
Dear Dennis,
Thank you for sharing your views of the meeting here.
I just wanted to clarify a point: your comments weren’t “declined”, we always value your contributions to our Society’s newsletter, they were merely de-duplicated from an article already written on the subject, since I didn’t want to waste our readers’ time with unnecessary repetition.
Kind regards,
Henry